The meeting was an opportunity to review the achievements and coordinate future actions of the Living Soils in the Americas initiative, which links science, public policies, the private sector and the work of restoring soils in the hemisphere, whose degradation threatens the position of Latin America and the Caribbean as guarantor of global food security.

Professor Rattan Lal, considered the world’s leading authority on soil sciences, and the Chilean Minister of Agriculture, Esteban Valenzuela, were the main speakers at the seminar.
Santiago, November 23, 2023 (IICA) – The soil is a living entity and caring for its health is essential to guarantee food sustainability and to support the fight against climate change, prestigious specialists and senior officials warned at an international seminar on public policies and sustainability of agriculture, which was organized in Chile by the government of that country and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).

The Chilean Minister of Agriculture, Esteban Valenzuela, and Professor Rattan Lal, considered the world’s leading authority on soil sciences, were the main speakers at the seminar.

The opening remarks were given by José Guardado Reyes, Director of the Agricultural and Livestock Service (SAG) of Chile; Gabino Reginato, Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Chile and Hernán Chiriboga, IICA Representative in the country. Marion Le Pommellec, specialist in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Development at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and Francisco Mello, manager of Knowledge Management and Horizontal Cooperation at IICA, also participated.

The speakers called for deepening measures to care for soil health, not only to guarantee food security but also to make a relevant contribution to global efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

The meeting was an opportunity to review the achievements and coordinate future actions of the Living Soils in the Americas initiative, which links science, public policies, the private sector and the work of restoring soils in the hemisphere, whose degradation threatens the position of Latin America and the Caribbean as guarantor of global food security.

The initiative is co-led by IICA and Rattan Lal, director of the Lal Carbon Center at Ohio State University.

Chile was one of the first countries to adhere to Living Soils in the Americas, which takes into account
this country a relevant participation of the main institutions of the agricultural and academic public sector: the SAG, the National Institute of Agricultural Development (INDAP), the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA) and the University of Chile.

As the speakers at the international seminar pointed out, the current environmental crisis reinforces the importance of soil as a critical element for carbon sequestration and also as a support for the food security of a growing world population.

Minister Valenzuela pointed out that 69% of soils in Chile have some level of degradation and reviewed the main policies and actions that are being carried out to reverse this process. Among other issues, he pointed out that it was possible to stop the process of supplanting native forests by forests planted with exotic species. He also made reference to the fact that mining enterprises are required to contribute money to a fund intended for restoration after the closure of the activity.

“In our strategy to restore native forests, we have signed significant agreements with IICA for the benefit of different regions of the country. In addition, the new irrigation law rewards farmers who carry out nature-based solutions,” he noted.

“Another good news for Chile,” he added, “is that, after 15 years of sterile debate, the first week of December the draft framework law for soil care will enter Parliament.”

The impact of climate change

“From the Amazon to the Andes and deep into Patagonia, climate change is causing megadroughts, extreme storms, deforestation and melting glaciers in Latin America,” said Rattan Lal, also an IICA Goodwill Ambassador.

The scientific laureate emphasized that in the region there are 15 million family productive units, covering 400 million hectares, of which about 10 million are subsistence.

“Family farmers are among the poorest in Latin America and the Caribbean due to lack of access to land, technologies, financial services and markets. Investing in them is an effective way to promote sustainable and inclusive growth,” he stated.

In that sense, he considered that small farmers are destined to play a decisive role in the transformation of agri-food systems and in the recovery of soils, which are part of the solution to the climate and food challenges that humanity faces.

One of the central points that Professor Lal pointed out as necessary to promote greater care of the soil is payment for ecosystem services to family farmers. He also noted the importance of regenerative agriculture, which includes several practices such as phasing out fossil fuel use, the circular economy, cover crops and no-till.

“The soil has rights like any other living organism: it must be cared for and managed appropriately,” summarized the scientist, World Food Prize winner in 2020.

Le Pomellec presented the IDB strategy to promote soil sustainability, within the sectoral framework of agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“The soils in the region – he maintained – are degraded due to inappropriate agricultural practices such as tillage, lack of coverage and excessive use of pesticides and this affects production and the provision of ecosystem services. The challenge is to keep the soils alive, recover degraded soils and return them to good health. “We work to make agriculture not a problem, but a solution for soil health.”

For his part, Mello reviewed the achievements of the Living Soils program in the Americas since its launch in December 2020 and explained its consolidation stage based on the support of political decision-makers from the continent, academic institutions, and public and private actors who They include several of the main companies in the agri-food sector, such as Syngenta, Bayer and PepsiCo.

“Living Soils in the Americas,” he said, “places agriculture as a transformative and central axis in the environmental agenda, since it plays the role of sequestering carbon through good productive practices. “Agriculture has a positive impact on the aspects of mitigation and adaptation to climate change and the fight against desertification and soil degradation.”

About IICA
It is the international organization specialized in agriculture of the Inter-American System, whose mission is to stimulate, promote and support the efforts of its 34 Member States to achieve agricultural development and rural well-being through excellent international technical cooperation.

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